Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Line-of-Sight


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   Delete --Anthony.bradbury"talk"  12:30, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Line-of-Sight

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I thought this page should get thoroughly cleaned up, but now it looks like a trivial restatement of the definition of the arctangent function. If this article should be saved, it should at least say that it's important to identify this particular instance of arctangent by this particular name because of its use in some field (navigation, maybe?). In addition If I'm wrong about that last point, explain why below. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:24, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * the title should be corrrected, using a lower-case initial "s" per Manual of Style;
 * Initial context-setting should be added. "Consider points A and B in two dimensions", without telling the lay reader that it is to be about mathematics, or about navigation, or whatever, is no way to start a Wikipedia article;
 * The mathematically incorrect formula should be fixed. This third point is where I realized that, after that correction, the concept seems too trivial to be worth an article.  The concept of arctangent is already covered in Wikipedia.


 * Delete. Already mentioned in Inverse trigonometric function - this is, indeed, a rather trivial (and common!) application of the arctangent function. No redirect, as it's pretty unlikely that someone would be looking for this exact term, capitalization, and punctuation. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 22:06, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Redirect I agree with the nominator, though this page should have a redirect to the arctangent function, as many disciplines know it by the phrase "line of sight". (I agree with respect to the spelling change proposed as well.) NoDepositNoReturn (talk) 07:28, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * What are the disciplines that know it as "line of sight"? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Radio/telecom, Surveying, ballistics. Primarily radio in my experience. I don't have a strong preference here; someone who knows "line of sight" is going to know "arctangent", but might first look for the commonly used term "line of sight". Does a redirect harm anything? NoDepositNoReturn (talk) 20:39, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * To be clear on this: You're saying that in those fields, "line of sight" means angle of elevation from the horizontal (that being the idea contemplated in this article), and does not mean any of the other specific things that "line of sight" means in some contexts? Is that right? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:37, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've actually reconsidered; I'm not certain enough to stand by what I said earlier, and in any case, the page may lead to confusion due to the term being widely used in other areas with varying definitions. For the specific uses of line-of-sight as in this article, we can add mention of them if they fit in context on the main pages for those disciplines. NoDepositNoReturn (talk) 20:21, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably not. Except that we'd need to consider what to do with the line of sight disambiguation page.  Probably any redirect should point there and maybe a line of sight (trigonometry) redirect page could handle that.  If there are many fields in which the term "line of sight" means what it means in the article we're consdiering here, then maybe an article could treat that and concentrate more on the applications and instances than on the mathematical formula. Michael Hardy (talk) 02:48, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.   --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  15:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete This would belong in Wiktionary, or possibly Wikibooks, if it were more defensible; but the term being defined is Angle of elevation, and the definition has an unexplained factor of 2 which looks supiciously like an error. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:21, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per above. NoDepositNoReturn (talk) 20:21, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.